South Africa vs New Zealand RWC 2015: Why Fourie Du Preez is the finest half-back in the world

He might be 33 and have a bad back but the clever No 9 is the Springboks’ master strategist on the pitch. Chris Hewett profiles the general who broke Welsh hearts – and plans to do the same to the All Blacks

(2015 Getty Images)

Picture the scene: the Springboks are in Paris, preparing for the 2007 World Cup final against England, and they have two of the sharpest tacticians in the whole of rugby as plotters-in-chief. Actually, make that three. Sitting alongside the head coach Jake White and his fellow think-tanker Eddie Jones is a scrum-half from Pretoria by the name of Fourie du Preez – a man who loses nothing to his elders and supposed betters in the brainpower department.

Some time after the big event, in which the South Africans prevailed 15-6 to secure a second global title in four attempts, White revealed that it was Du Preez who identified the principal threat to Bokke ambitions during that meeting of minds. According to the man known as vuurhoutjie (Afrikaans for “matchstick”), there was no reason for the Boks to lose sleep over Jason Robinson or Jonny Wilkinson, the two stellar names in the red-rose back division, or panic about the heavyweight props Andrew Sheridan and Phil Vickery. The most dangerous customer was – wait for it – England’s own No 9, Andy Gomarsall.

Du Preez, who had turned in one of the performances of the tournament in driving the Boks to a 36-0 victory over the same opponents in the pool stage, argued that the oft-marginalised and widely disregarded Gomarsall had done more than anyone to bring about the transformation in his country’s fortunes.

“He’s a very good player and a huge improvement on Shaun Perry [England’s original first choice at half-back],” he told the coaches. “He has a strong kicking game and he keeps his opposite number busy. He’s in your face all the time, has enough skill to vary his approach and takes a lot of pressure off the 10 and 12.” Thus forewarned and forearmed, the South Africans entered the arena with their target in clear view.

This flash of left-field inspiration is typical of Du Preez, who was certainly the brightest player at that tournament and may well be the cleverest at this one. Ask the Wales players, who are still trying to fathom how the Springbok general left them for dead with a match-winning try at the back end of last Saturday’s Twickenham quarter-final. Better still, ask Brian Ashton, the head coach of England when Du Preez masterminded those two victories in France eight years ago.

Writing in these pages, Ashton described him as “the finest half-back in the world” and praised his “acute understanding of the game, which stems in part from the fact that he is one of the keenest and most inquisitive students of rugby I’ve ever met.” He concluded by saying that Du Preez had a priceless ability to “shape a game to his side’s requirements”.

Those virtues have scarcely diminished, despite the Springboks’ four-year flirtation with the Japanese club rugby scene following the 2011 World Cup in All Black country – not quite a busman’s holiday, but indisputably a more restful existence than the endless slogs around the Super Rugby beat that would have been his lot had he stayed in Pretoria and continued playing for the Blue Bulls.

Few would accuse Du Preez of being the finest passer of a ball ever to wear the No 9 shirt at Test level: heaven knows, he is not Nigel Melville incarnate. He is not the quickest thing on two legs, either, although his speed of thought more than made up for that deficiency against Wales six days ago. Add to this the fact that his kicking from hand is currently compromised by a persistent back injury – Heyneke Meyer, the Springbok coach, publicly admitted as much a few days before the quarter-final – and some might wonder if a fall from grace could be imminent.

Only an ignoramus would buy such an argument, for Du Preez means as much to this South African vintage as he did in ’07. Why else would Meyer have gone down on bended knee and pleaded with the scrum-half to banish whatever personal doubts over form and fitness he may have had and commit himself to this campaign? Why else would he have asked him to captain the team once the centre Jean de Villiers and the lock Victor Matfield hit the orthopaedic buffers?

And why else would a match-winning scrum-half as potent as Ruan Pienaar be slumming it on the Springbok bench? Pienaar, a very superior talent whose skills have re-established Ulster as a going concern in top-level European rugby, is nobody’s pushover on the training field. Yet, try as he might, he cannot find a way past Du Preez into the starting line-up.

“We’re both competing hard for one position and we both want to be on the field from the kick-off,” said the man from Bloemfontein this week, bristling just a little. “Fourie prides himself on his game management, as do I, but only one of us can start. I have a lot of freedom to play it the way I want to play it with Ulster, but with the Springboks it’s not quite the same and that makes it hard for me. Still, I support Fourie completely, just as he is supportive of me. We go back a long way.”

These comments indicate that Meyer places a higher premium on the iron control and navigational instinct Du Preez brings to a game than on Pienaar’s more dynamic brand of individualism, even though it comes with the added extra of a goal-kicking option his rival cannot offer. If truth be told, most master coaches would make the same call, especially at this unforgiving point in the tournament.

It is not the case that World Cup-winning teams are necessarily blessed with a scrum-half of the front rank. Joost van der Westhuizen was certainly in that category when the Boks won on home soil in 1995, and the two Wallaby No 9s to have laid hands on the trophy, Nick Farr-Jones and George Gregan, were as good as anyone around at the time, but other victorious No 9s were of a lesser quality. All things considered, Du Preez played the best rugby yet seen from a half-back on the global stage during that tournament eight years ago.

If South Africa are to become the first country to win a third title, he will have to scale the heights once again. Does he have it in him? He is 33 now, his body is in rebellious mood and he is not entirely convinced of his own powers. The flip side? Let Meyer explain. “He’s a tactical genius – the most astute player I’ve ever coached,” says the boss. “If you look at all the games where South Africa play well, Fourie is there. I’ll always pick him.” That seems clear enough.